


lungs stitched with thin thread

by duckiesandlemons



Series: the parts that make up the me and you [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Breathing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, yes breathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 18:54:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3860926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckiesandlemons/pseuds/duckiesandlemons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His breathing is always the weakest then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lungs stitched with thin thread

**Author's Note:**

> Continues to write ridiculous ShunYuus and then cries about them :'>
> 
> please enjoy!!

Yuuya presses his ear to Shun’s chest, hears the inhales and the exhales, closes his eyes, and thinks on how shaky they sound.

A rattling rasp of breath--shallow, coarse--and Yuuya wonders how many injuries has Shun breathed in.  What pain has he forced into his lungs, what situations--dust, smoke, and ash?  They’re questions Yuuya wants answered with every breath Shun takes, but he won’t pry.  He understands that it’s a level of intimacy they have yet to reach.

He understands (even when Shun pulls Yuuya close, wraps arms around his shoulders and lets him rest against his chest) that Shun is not yet willing to open up everything to him.  Yuuya doesn’t want to make that connection.  Not unless Shun is willing to let Yuuya push his hands in deep and pry him apart, piece by piece by piece.  

Yuuya doesn’t expect it to happen.

Shun is incredibly guarded by nature.  Yuuya recognizes that he is still something new.  Something that Shun would have never thought to bring into his life if Akaba Reiji hadn’t happened--if this whole dimensional war never happened.  And how bad would it be of Yuuya to think that, if this war never happened, if Akaba Reo’s ambitions had never come to light, he would never have had this chance?

That Shun would still be in Heartland with Yuuto and Ruri, living out the life he had wanted, and Yuuya still in Standard, without them meeting.

(That Shun would still have what he really wants, and Yuuya feels so, so petty)

He presses his ear closer to Shun’s chest.

Another rattling breath.

The guilt eats at Yuuya, and if somehow Shun is ready then maybe it’s Yuuya who isn’t.

(Yuuya with hang ups on his face and who he looks like and self-confidence issues and guilt for thinking things that he shouldn’t)

Shun shifts, hand coming up to rest on Yuuya’s back.  A warm weight that burns, and Yuuya finds himself tearing up.

Another raspy breath.

“I can’t sleep,” Shun ends up saying.

“...were you really thinking of doing that?”  Yuuya tries to keep his voice light.  

“Try to,” Shun’s hand slides up to rest between Yuuya’s shoulder blades.  “I can’t.”  He’s not used to it, he means, and he keeps expecting to have to get up at a moment’s notice.

“You should,” Yuuya tells him.  Shun always looks so tired, and he wants him to rest as much as possible if he can.

“...mmm,” Shun doesn’t say much past that.  He just closes his eyes, takes another slow breath that Yuuya can hear, feel.  

Shun’s chest trembles, weak, and Yuuya is afraid that at any minute Shun might collapse.  That his lungs will cave in on themselves, be pierced by bone, and he’ll be left gasping for breath.  Breath that Yuuya wants to give, breath that keeps Shun alive and pushes him through everything that happens.

Yuuya wants to be that support for Shun, the person who heals every cut and bruise and scrape and burn.  He’s not fit for that.  That’s a job for someone else, someone with that connection Shun let them have.  Someone with that connection Yuuya doesn’t (is afraid to) have.

Yuuya breathes.

He wants to say something to break the silence that’s fallen.  Peaceable for Shun, most likely, but awkward for himself.  Even with every inhale and exhale that Shun takes,that Yuuya counts, and with the rise and fall of his chest, Yuuya can’t bring himself to relax.  Words are stuck heavy on his tongue, pressed to the back of his throat.

He’s going to suffocate.

“I want to,” Shun speaks up again.  His eyes are still closed.  “Sleep.  It’s hard.”

“Is it because you can’t relax?  Nightmares, maybe?”

Not that Yuuya can understand what Shun has been through.  It’s hard, and what’s happened to him is not even a fraction of what Shun has seen.  It’s nothing compared to the nights where he’s heard Shun wake up, dying gasps in the air and tears that Yuuya’s seen him hastily wipe away.

His breathing is always the weakest then.

“No,” Yuuya can feel Shun’s hand clench into the fabric of his shirt, “I think.  Too much, sometimes, and not enough others.”

“Memories, then.”

“Those, guilt, possible what ifs and things that could have been.”

A sigh.

It’d be pointless to try and comfort him.  Yuuya doesn’t even know what to say.  They’d all sound half-hearted, weak, as if he didn’t really mean them.  He does, he does mean them.  Every single word he’s ever said to Shun--earnestly, joylessly, angrily--he’s meant them.

(It’s too bad he thinks that Shun sees another version of him, not Yuuya himself, that maybe each time they’ve talked Shun probably imagines another person)

“Medicine works,” Yuuya offers instead of everything else he’s wanted to say.  “Mom used to give me a sleeping aid when I was younger and couldn’t sleep.”

“I’ve tried.”

“It didn’t work?”

“No, I woke up from nightmares.”

The harsh whoosh of air Shun releases is a parody of a laugh.

It’s Yuuya’s turn to grip at Shun, to grasp at the fabric of his shirt with fingers roughened only from action dueling, to bury his face into Shun’s chest.  It’s the best comfort he can give, the best he can do while they straddle this line of “intimacy” and “friendship.”

Of...whatever they are.

Yuuya can’t quite put a name on it.

“What kind of nightmares?” his question is muffled by Shun’s chest.

Shun sucks in a large breath.  One that Yuuya can feel, barely hear, and it’s the same rattling all over again.  

He’s still afraid of Shun breaking.

“Heartland,” Shun starts off.  Clipped and distant, as if he doesn’t want to really answer and Yuuya may have possibly asked the wrong things.  “Before the invasion,” Shun continues anyways.  “No...best to say if...it never happened.”

“So like the Action Field?”

A harsh laugh.

“What Akaba paints as Heartland in this solid vision system of theirs does nothing to show what Heartland really is.”

Shun’s thumb starts moving against Yuuya’s back, small up and down motions that are soothing.

“Life as it had been, would probably stay, with Yuuto and Ruri.  Others, too.  School, dueling, tournaments--”

Yuuya’s heard this before.

“--smiling and laughing instead of grim faces and crying.”

“That sounds more like a dream than a nightmare.”

“It just reminds me,” of things that he can no longer have.  Not until this entire dimensional war is settled.  Even then a part of Yuuya doesn’t want it to end because then Shun will go home.  He will go home and rebuild with Ruri and Yuuto and Yuuya will stay in Standard.  It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

(Then let me help you make new memories)

“We’ll get them back soon enough,” it’s a lie, in a ways, not the words he really wants to say.  “Ruri and Yuuto, and--”

Yuuya doesn’t even get to finish.

Shun moves unexpectedly, startling, and Yuuya finds himself on his back with a warm weight on top of him.  Solid, sure, the rattling breaths no longer heavy in Yuuya’s ears.  Shun’s head rests on Yuuya’s chest, his arms wrapped tight around Yuuya.

Yuuya breathes.

His chest stutters, heat flooding his face, because Shun’s never done this.  This has never happened before.

“...it’s weak,” Shun ends up saying.  “It shouldn’t be.”

“What is?”

“Your breathing.”

Yuuya tries to say something.  

He opens and closes his mouth several times, attempts to push words out of it, but he can’t.  Not with how Shun just keeps his head resting against Yuuya’s chest.  Not with how Shun listens intently to every breath Yuuya makes, the pulses of his heart.  

“It makes me worried,” Shun admits once Yuuya’s finally decided what to do and has placed his hands on Shun’s back.

“Worried?”

“Like they’ll collapse and I’ll…”

Shun doesn’t say anything else.  Doesn’t force anything else past that, but Yuuya understands.  He understands because he thinks the exact same thing.

His fingers twist into Shun’s shirt.

“I won’t.”

(Maybe it won’t be that hard to connect after all)


End file.
